Your Honorable Honor (King of Clubs, California)
2023-11-08 00:32:41
For years, some law enforcement agencies have replaced the faces of traditional playing card decks with images of missing and murdered people and distributed those cards in prisons hoping inmates would come forward with information needed to crack these cold cases wide open. Now, audiochuck is dealing you in. Each week, we will be working with investigators and family members to bring you the details of some of the coldest cases from around the country in hopes that someone listening can finally bring these victims the justice they deserve.
Our card this week is your honorable honor, the King of Clubs from California. This is a case I'd bet money you haven't heard of, because when you google her name only, her cold case card pops up, nothing else. The story of 62-year-old Your honorable honor, better known as Honor, has more than been forgotten. It's never been told until now. I'm Ashley Flowers and this is the deck.
The late summer air in southern California felt pleasantly fall-like on September 14th, 1994.
Perfect for a leisurely walk around the up-and-coming, peaceful Fletcher Hills neighborhood. But for 42-year-old James Nelson, that was hardly his idea of a relaxing afternoon. Instead, he was kicked back in the TV room watching 80s crime dramas. Making the most of a relatively calm house. Given that it was 2pm on a weekday, only three of his ten housemates were home at the huge split-level residence.
Larry was in his bedroom and Miguel was downstairs with James, and he could hear that their landlord-slash-housemate, Honor was upstairs yelling at her dog. But just as James was getting into an episode of Magnum P.I, his afternoon veg Sesh was suddenly and loudly interrupted.
He heard a long, drawn-out scream. And his statement was that he initially thought that maybe the dog had gotten out and gotten hit by a car or something like that.
That's retired Sgt. Kevin Trotter with the El Cajon Police Department. The blood-curdling scream brought James to his feet and he ran upstairs to see what had happened.
As he entered into the front entryway of the house from the downstairs, he noticed blood on the floor. And the front door was open and he could see the gate out to the street was open. Which he thought supported his belief that maybe the dog had gotten out because she would never leave that gate open. And as he entered the area, he found her on her back in the kitchen, right next to the front door.
It was honor. She was unresponsive, sprawled out on the floor in a pool of blood, and her dog was standing at her feet, whining. Horrified, James rushed over to the landline in the kitchen to call police, but the phone was quote-unquote. Locked up. Honor had installed a device on it that prevented tenants from making calls without authorized access. Her way of limiting long-distance calls. So unable to call for help himself, James booked it back downstairs, ordering Miguel and Larry to phone the cops.
And hearing the franticness in his voice, Miguel called 911 with the phone downstairs that was unlocked, while Larry ran back upstairs with James. Now, Larry and James could tell that Honor was already dead. So if they couldn't save her, the least they could do was try and save the scene from contamination. Larry tried to get the dog away from Honor's body so it wouldn't mess anything up. While James continued out the front door to flag down police who were quick to arrive at the scene, authorities immediately began roping off the crime scene, which was bigger than what James had initially discovered.
In front of the residence, there was a car that had some blood on the hood of it. And then there was some various spots of blood in that walkway. Based on that bits of the blood and the blood out by the car, like, tells me that that was where it started.
Like Trotter said, the trail of blood went from the car in the driveway across the sidewalk and ended in the pool of blood around Honor inside. Now. It wasn't clear from the scene if the attacker had followed Honor into the home or if she'd retreated there after the encounter. What was clear, though, was that the attack was brutal and it was targeted. There were puncture wounds on Honor's neck and her throat had been slashed. But with what? Investigators didn't know, because they couldn't find a murder weapon on the scene.
Neither could officers, scouring every inch of the neighborhood.
The investigators at the time walked the entire block and went through trash cans and everything else, and never located anything that they believed to be a murder weapon.
Back at the house, investigators were quick to start interviewing the housemates who were at home when the attack happened. James, Larry and Miguel. But like I mentioned, they were all doing their own thing at the time, Larry said. He was in his room building a model airplane, Miguel was watching TV, and so was James. So, unfortunately, none of them witnessed anything.
But in talking to the three of them, police got some good context regarding Honor's life. It seemed that she'd essentially converted her whole home into a hostel, renting out rooms to long-term tenants. Which, for investigators, meant they had a long list of people to interview. And lucky for them, with each passing hour, more of those tenants began showing up at the house. Detectives asked each of them if they knew of anyone who had an axe to grind with honor. And surprisingly, nearly every person pointed the finger at one tenant, in particular, 36-year-old Paul Brink, who also happened to be Honor's longtime boyfriend.
Everyone said the two of them had a tumultuous relationship, to say the least, constant bickering, but no physical abuse that anyone knew of. One tenant said Paul told him Honor controlled all of his money, which seemed to be the source of many of their arguments. And actually almost on cue. Paul showed up at the house, they broke the news to him about his girlfriend. And once Paul regained his composure, they got right into questioning, asking him to walk through everything he'd done that day.
Paul said the day was nothing out of the ordinary. He and Honor met with a new tenant that morning, who was moving in soon. She had come to the house to drop off some boxes as well as her deposit. After that, Honor asked Paul to go to the store and pick up some items in preparation for Honor's trip later that day to go visit her grandchildren. She was going to go stay with her daughter Valerie and her husband and kids about an hour or so away, just for a few days.
So after dropping those items off at home, Paul said that he went to work at 1 p.
M.
Where he stayed the rest of the day until right now when he showed up, and now police are questioning him. So truly, he says, nothing unusual happened that he could think of. Police asked Paul the same question they were asking everyone else if he knew of Honor having beef with anyone.
And he brought up a name no one else had yet, Jim Boone. Jim was an old tenant who'd moved out a few weeks prior. Now it's not super clear why. Paul immediately accused Jim, but he did note that Jim's ex-wife disliked Honor and would always hang up on her during phone conversations. Now, investigators kind of brushed off the whole Jim thing. Because not only did it sound kind of baseless, but also because everything else that they were learning seemed to point to Paul. A theory that only grew stronger after talking with one of Honor's daughters, Julie.
Julie told police that the only person she thought might have killed her mom was Paul, like everyone else. She mentioned their rocky relationship, and she claimed it was exasperated by Paul's struggle with a substance use disorder. But if Paul was involved, that meant his alibi of being at work had to be bogus, so investigators honed in on vetting that. In. Talking with Paul, they learned that he was a contract custodian at a local sears, which is where he claimed to have been when Honor was killed.
And he gave a step-by-step account of his whole shift.
He went through, I cleaned these bathrooms, I did these things, and the detectives went and checked those bathrooms.
Detectives felt that in each of the places Paul said he cleaned, there was evidence that he did in fact clean them, like mostly empty trash cans, for example. But police didn't just stop there. While at sears, they also checked around with some of his co-workers.
They did also talk to a number of other employees who were able to say yes. I saw him at around this time, he helped me clean up a mess here, he was in the elevator there.
Paul's timeline for the afternoon was filling up. And with the 10 to 15 minute drive that it would have taken for him to return home, commit the murder. And then the 10 to 15 minutes back to work, things just weren't adding up, but I mean, still, it wasn't impossible.
They couldn't 100 say that he couldn't have left work, he did have a vehicle. He could have theoretically done it and come back in a relatively short time frame, you know, 30 minutes, possibly, or less.
But even with that in mind, it still didn't seem likely that Paul was their killer, so investigators kept their eye on him. But they had to move on and soon enough they had something promising to move on to.
Investigators spoke with one of Honor's best friends, and she brought up the name that they'd heard from Paul Jim Boone, she said. Jim's ex-wife hated Honor, though the friend didn't explain why. Luckily, Jim and his ex were easy to track down and they both agreed to phone interviews. The ex-wife flat out told investigators that what they'd been told was true. She didn't like Honor or Paul, for that matter. She claimed that they did drugs, specifically pot and meth, which is why she wasn't too fond of them.
But the hatred didn't run deeper than that. It seemed Jim was interviewed at the same time as his ex, but as far as I know, he wasn't asked any questions regarding hard feelings toward honor. Why? I truly don't know. Seems like a good time to bring that up and get some clarity. But instead, they chose to ask him about Paul, and Jim didn't have much to say other than completely unrelated speculation about his sexuality.
After that call, Jim and his ex-wife essentially fell off the persons of interest list. And before anyone knew it, the entire investigation had come to a screeching halt. Everyone was either pointing the finger at Paul, who had a pretty rock solid alibi, or Jim. A claim that seemed largely unfounded. So sadly, Honor's case just sat on the shelf collecting dust until 1997, when someone came and shook the tree. And that someone was the newly appointed detective on Honor's case who in October of 1997, decided it was time to follow up on an old lead.
And this lead came in the form of a person, a woman named Priscilla Chavez, who went by Breanne. Kind of like Breanne with a P, which is how I'll be referring to her anyway. The detective went to Breanne's house to chat with her about a call that she had made to police at an earlier date. I'll let Trotter tell you what went down in that initial call.
She stated she had some involvement with the homicide, that she was the person that killed her. And then basically immediately recanted and said, I didn't really do it. I just want to make sure that you guys are still working on it.
Now here's what's weird. Trotter can't find any record of that initial call happening. Like, he's got pages and pages of information regarding the follow-up visit in 97, but nothing on the actual initial call to police. So he doesn't know what exactly Breanne said, or when the call occurred, or even how. This 1997 investigator homed in on a tip that there is no record of. But here's Trotter reading from the detective's report about that follow-up interview with Breanne.
He says she had no further information as to who may have killed Donner and denied having killed her herself. I asked if she had killed Donner because at an earlier date and time, she had confessed that she had killed Donner. I asked why she had done that, and she said. I did it because I felt nothing was being done in the investigation and I wanted to get the investigation started again. I knew I shouldn't have done something like that because I could get in trouble for it, but I just wanted to see the case get worked.
To make things even more interesting, Breanne's confession wasn't the first time her name popped up in the investigation. In fact, her name was brought up day one, but not as a suspect. You see on the day of the murder, police told Paul. Remember Honor's boyfriend that he would need to find someplace else to stay for the time being, you know? Given that the house that he lived in was an active crime scene? So Paul said, Okay, yeah, I've got someone I can stay with. It was a friend just a few houses away, around the corner, a friend named Breanne Chavez.
So officers obliged, they drove him to Breanne's home and dropped him off, which is interesting, in hindsight.
I don't know why this didn't raise more red flags initially, but now investigators wondered if something more was going on there, though. Even though it's clearly getting clocked in 1997, as far as I can tell, there was no dogged pursuit to get to the bottom of what, if anything, was going on. It seems like, for the time being, police just assumed that she was wanting attention or something and dropped it. Waiting for other leads to come along, which it was gonna take a hot minute before that happened. But eventually, 14 years later, something would fall right into their laps. In August of 2011, investigators at the El Cajon PD got a phone call from someone familiar, none other than Breanne Chavez.
Now, this time, she wasn't confessing to any murders, she just said she was checking in.
She said she knew Honor and wanted to make sure she had not been forgotten. She wanted to share with investigators information she believed could help in the investigation.
With a nearly 17-year-old cold case on their hands at that point, detectives weren't in any position to turn down potential leads. So a detective made an appointment to meet with Breanne while they were still on the phone scheduling the interview. The detective heard a male voice in the background and thought Breanne said the name Paul. So the detective took a shot in the dark and asked if that was Paul Brink in the background.
And Breanne said, Yes, yes, it was. And listen, same. I know that tingling feeling you got at the back of your neck, me too, but we already knew Breanne and Paul were friends before.
Maybe they still were, do I think it's a little strange to still be friends, however, many years later, with the lady who confessed to your late girlfriend's murder? Yeah, I do a little, but maybe that's just me now. Lucky for this investigator. When he showed up at Breanne's house for their chat, Paul was there too, so he could ask the burning questions we all now have.
Here's Trotter reading from that detective's report.
It says I asked Chavez and Brink how they met each other. Brink said that the original detective asked him if he had a place to stay. While ECPD was investigating the crime scene and Brink went to Chavez's residence. And they began to have a relationship for approximately one year.
So, right after his girlfriend of 14 years gets murdered, he jumps into a year-long relationship with another woman, who is later a person of interest in his girlfriend's murder. Okay, rebounds are a thing, I know trauma, bonding is a thing. And truly, I don't even know what his living situation may have been. So was the relationship built on convenience if the house that he was in was no longer an option for him?
Whatever the reason is, they spend the next year together. But Paul said that after he and Preeanne broke up, he got into another relationship for 12 years. So why is he with Preeanne now? Well after that 12-year relationship ended, he came running back to Preeanne in 2008, and they'd been together ever since.
But Preeanne and Paul both said that they hadn't been in a relationship prior to Honor's death, only after, I mean, immediately after, but after. Nonetheless, now was that the truth? Hard to know, because both Preeanne and Paul seemed to have a complicated relationship with the truth. For instance, the detective asked Paul if he knew that Preeanne had called the police recently regarding Honor's case.
And he was like, No, I had no idea, but remember he was literally in the room with Preeanne when she called. So that doesn't totally add up, and then you have this whole thing, even starting because Preeanne confessed and then unconfessed, so things feel muddy.
Anyway, it seemed like Paul was glad investigators were there because he had a new theory for them. One that involved Honor's son-in-law, Joe, who was married to Honor's daughter, Valerie. That was the couple that Honor was supposed to go and stay with the day that she died.
Joe was a real estate person, so he was fairly well-to-do. They lived in a gated community. Honor is an eccentric lady, and Honor and Joe didn't get along. Paul's speculation is that he wouldn't want her there because she would embarrass him in front of his Highfalutin neighbors. And that that would be the motivation for killing her, to prevent her from coming up there.
Preeanne agreed with Paul's conjecture, and she piled on with a story of her own.
Chavez said she found it suspicious that Joe had a yard sale on Honor's residence after the murder, getting rid of all her belongings. Chavez asked Joe how much he wanted for everything, and he said 100 bucks. Chavez told Joe she wanted to buy everything and would come back with $100. When she returned, 20 minutes later, Joe had packed up everything and was gone. The investigator asked Chavez why she wanted Honor's belongings, and she said, I had money, why not?
It was my birthday present.
Now theories were all well and good, they took notes, but that wasn't why they were there. Detectives wanted to revisit Preeanne's confession from years ago.
Chavez was asked if she had contacted the El Colon Police Department in the past regarding Honor's investigation. Chavez said she had contacted detectives in the past. She stated On one occasion, she told the detectives she was the person who murdered Honor. She said she wanted detectives to do something about the case and that is why she told them she did it. She was asked if she murdered Honor, and she replied, No, I didn't know her.
But she obviously did know Honor, she literally just said she wanted to buy all her possessions, and Preeanne did eventually admit that she knew her. Her son was best friends with Honor's son, and that's how they knew each other. And then she admitted that they had a few unsavory interactions.
Chavez said that once Honor came to her house because she was upset with Brink, who was at her residence, Chavez said. She remembered a belt being ripped during this incident, Chavez said. She also remembers walking by Honor's house once, and Honor began talking to her.
Before Preeanne could finish the second story, though, Paul cut her off. He stood up, thanked the detectives for coming, walked toward the front door and held it open, one of the detectives wrote in his report. Quote It was clear to me that Brink was uncomfortable and wanted us to leave the residence. End quote. Paul basically did everything short of saying, Don't let the door hit you on the way out. So what the rest of that story was, investigators would never know because they would never talk directly with Preeanne again.
She died in 2018 of cancer, and investigators were left wondering if any hope of solving Honor's case died with her. But then they found someone in Preeanne's life who might be able to help.
Two years after Preeanne's death in 2020, Preeanne's sister randomly came forward to police with an interesting story. The sister said she and a niece were at Preeanne's bedside, visiting her while she was in hospice care. And that's when, out of nowhere, Preeanne said, Remember Honor? The two said, Yes, they remembered, and then Preeanne's sister said. Preeanne made a gesture, dragging her finger across her neck like a throat slash.
And then she told them the murder weapon would never be found. That was it. You could call it confession number two for Preeanne. Now. I don't know why the sister didn't come forward sooner, and I don't know what sparked her desire to do so in 2020. But I don't wanna harp on that too much because let's be real, better late than never, right? And this was huge for the investigation.
Detectives were hopeful that the sister could provide a bit more context for them. Like details of the truth behind Honor and Preeanne's relationship and their apparent hatred of each other. But unfortunately, she said she wasn't that close with her sister, so she didn't really know anything concrete. She'd heard through the grapevine about a potential love triangle involving Preeanne and Honor, but that was all she knew. Police wanted to get in contact with the niece, who supposedly was there and witnessed the same confession. But when they got ahold of her, she remembered things just a bit differently.
Like, she remembered it happening, but the details weren't 100 the same. She recalled that Preeanne started talking about honor out of nowhere and then verbally confessed that. She quote slit her throat and then took the knife to quote Daddy's and hit it. Now, like I said, this is two years later that these women are coming forward with this story. So it's understandable to have some discrepancy between accounts, but honestly, even these discrepancies to me aren't totally discrepancies. They're both kind of saying the same thing.
Either way, whichever point of view you believe, or a combination of the two, that is a full-on deathbed confession. That's how Trotter felt, too, when he read it in the case file. He had actually retired from the department in 2020, but returned about a year later on a part-time basis to assist with cold case homicides. Part of Trotter's job when he came back was to go through their files and determine which cases had the highest solvability. And with a deathbed confession, Honors was very high on that list.
When I heard there's a deathbed confession on this. That would be a great early win that I thought we would get to get the team rallied and start making progress. I thought, Oh, this one should be easy.
Wishful thinking trotter. With their prime suspect, deceased, investigators decided that their best route was DNA testing. There had been some testing done of all the blood found at the scene back in the day and at the time, everything had come back to honor. But present-day detectives were hopeful that with modern technology, they'd be able to find something, anything that would be a match to their killer.
But as you well know, these things take time. And in the meantime, they had other matters to tend to. Like paying a visit to the man closest to the victim and the suspect, the one who hadn't been interviewed in a decade. Trotter and the team scheduled a visit with Paul to collect an oral swab, you know, to compare to any potential foreign DNA that they might find in their testing. Paul was totally cooperative with the sample collection. And while the team was there, they decided to ask him a few questions, particularly questions about Prianne's deathbed confession.
Frank acknowledged the statement was made, but he claimed Chavez was not capable of it and that she loved and respected honor.
Paul also said that Prianne might have been trying to draw some attention to herself because she was always jealous of Honor and how popular she was now. Paul was more than willing to answer all of investigators questions, but he did have a few things of his own to get off his chest. Like reiterating his suspicion of Joe, Honor's son-in-law, he noted that one time prior to Honor's murder, Joe said something kind of sketchy.
Prior to the homicide, at some point, Joe was at their house and Joe was telling Paul, you should move out. Something bad's gonna happen here.
But Joe's involvement wasn't Paul's only theory. He also mentioned that he thought the mafia might have had something to do with it. Of course, like last time, the detectives listened to what Paul had to say and they documented it. But what they really wanted to know about was the details of Honor and Prianne's relationship. They asked if the two of them had ever gotten into a fight that he knew of.
And he was like, Actually, yeah, they had a little cat fight once, and he claimed that it was over him. Here's Trotter reading from his own report this time.
I asked why they would fight over him, and he claimed not to know. I asked if he had been having a relationship with the Chavez at that time, since he went to live with her. Immediately after the homicide, Frank initially claimed that he and Chavez were never in a romantic or sexual relationship. He also maintained that he did not know why Honor and Chavez had had a fight over him.
At this point, we thanked him for his cooperation and I gave him a business card as we were about to leave. Brink shook my hand and he admitted to me that he and Chavez did actually have sex. But it was only one time, he said. it was before the homicide.
So he did have an affair with Prianne. Police had long suspected that to be the case, but now they had confirmation. That is, if you can trust anything, Paul says. I, for one, think you can't trust the guy as far as you can throw him. But I don't know why he'd lie about an affair anyways. Investigators left that interview with Paul scratching their heads with a lot to think about.
None of the investigators bought the Joe angle simply because the motive just didn't make sense. Killing your mother-in-law because she potentially embarrasses you for a couple of days like, that's a bit of a stretch. But you might be asking yourself, what about the whole you should move out? Something bad's gonna happen here thing that Joe supposedly said to Paul and listen, fair, that's sketchy. But Trotter says he's pretty sure that comment was taken out of context.
It was known that Joe, who was a real estate guy, was unhappy with what Honor had done with her house. She'd converted her garage and pool house to living spaces, and was essentially running a whole business out of her home.
I think really, what Joe was afraid of was, at some point, the city would come down on her. And the way she'd butchered up this house and that she would wind up homeless. But that's a bit speculative. But I think that would be his concern about why he would get in there and say things like, you should get out of here.
So investigators kind of swept the whole Joe thing to the side and focused on the Preanne angle once again, but detectives hadn't heard the end from Paul. To this day. He keeps in regular contact with investigators and it seems like each time he reaches out, he has something new to add. Like, in February of this year, he called up the Cold Case squad to get a little bit more off his chest.
He reiterated his confession that, yes, he'd had an affair with Preanne, and this time he even provided a timeline. He said that it was six years before the murder and it had only happened once. Paul also gave an explanation, this time for why he thought the mafia was involved, he claimed. One of the housemates who found Honor murdered said it looked like a hit by a professional.
Now, he didn't specify which housemate told him that, but he said that that's his sole reason for thinking organized crime was involved. Another time Paul contacted police, he tried to discredit Preanne's deathbed confession, saying that she was in hospice care and receiving doses of pain medication when it happened.
He believed that she was not in her sound mind and hallucinating when she made those statements.
Which, to be fair, could be a valid point. But police aren't totally buying it, though. The case is still wide open and they're doing their best to keep an open mind.
Right now, literally where we're at is, I think we've talked to all the people that we can talk to. So for us, we're really hoping to pursue getting items that we have in evidence that were collected from the time. Reanalyzed using modern DNA standards and techniques in the hopes of identifying a suspect that has thus far not been identified or confirmed. So, I mean, if we were to find Preanne Chavez's DNA at the crime scene or on the clothing of the victim, that would be rather significant. Or someone else that wasn't her.
Because, I mean, we don't know for sure, that's where the investigation needs to go on. Unfortunately, the reason we're not making progress with that is that our local sheriff's department is very backlogged. And they basically told us they're not gonna get to it anytime soon. Because the suspect, Preanne, is deceased since 2018, so it's not like a public safety issue.
Trotter said the last estimate they got from the lab was two years, and, don't get me wrong, I get what Trotter's saying and why the testing is taking so long. But I can't imagine how frustrating it is, not only for detectives, but for Honor's loved ones, waiting and waiting for this testing. That may very well not yield the results they're hoping for at all. And if it doesn't, that means the suspect isn't dead and there might be a public safety issue. We did let them know about the nonprofit I founded that provides grants to investigating agencies for things like DNA testing.
So Season of Justice is on their radar. But for now, they are crossing their fingers and waiting either for those results or for another groundbreaking tip that'll take the case over the finish line. And maybe just maybe someone out there listening right now can help with the latter. But before I close out this episode, I wanna take a minute to tell you about Honor.
Some would use the word eccentric to describe her, but I lean toward using the word spunky or individualistic. When she wanted to do something, she did it, and she didn't give a damn what anyone else thought, even her name. I mean, I'm sure you've guessed by now that that's not her birth name. Prior to the name change, she was Betty Sue Freeburn.
And one day, in the late 60s or early 70s, she was watching a film in which one of the actresses name was Honor. And she loved the name so much that she wanted to have her whole name changed to just honor. Like one name like Adele or Beyonce. But when she went to sign the paperwork and make things official, they wouldn't let her have just one name, so instead she cooked up your honorable honor.
It's a cute, funny story, but I think it says a lot about how Honor lived her life and who she was, which is true to herself.
That is the honor that so many around her knew and loved, and it's the honor her family is still longing to see one more time. Like I mentioned at the top of this episode, Honor's case hasn't seen an ounce of the coverage it deserves. But that doesn't mean her story has been forgotten. Her children are still longing to see their mom's case solved after all these years.
They deserve closure, and honor deserves justice. So please, if you know anything about the murder of your honorable honor in 1994, call the El Cajon Police Department at 619-593-5774..
Or you can email them at Coldcase at Elcajon.
Gov.
The Deck is an audiochuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast..com. So what do you think, Chuck, do you approve?
v1.0.0.260408-1-a910ba6_os